Selecting object after parenting

[james-daugherty]

Hi all,

I'm getting back to mel after some time away from Maya and it turns out I've forgotten alot of stuff and it looks like everything is moving to python too.

I'm creating a group and parenting 3 locators to it, but I'm losing the abiltiy to select the objects after they are parented. I know it's because the name changes from something like "|locator" to "locatorGRP|locator". And if I run the script a couple of times I get locatorGRP1|locator, locatorGRP2|locator.....etc.  What's a good way to handle the situation? should I search for other nodes with the same name and increment so that they each have a unique name, or should I build the long name by concatenating the locator and parent names?  I'm just kind of curious how the Pro's do it.

Thanks,

James

Ps. More questions will be coming as I remeber what else I've forgotten.

[davus]

Can't speak for everyone, but personally I'd append the name of the parent group to the locators when they are created. For instance if I had a goup null call "Duck", the locators under it would be named "Duck_Locator1, Duck_Locator2, Duck_Locator2". It'd be real easy to select your locators by name then. 

something like:

string $grpName = "Duck";

int $numLocs = 3;

for($i=1;$i<=$numLocs;$i++){spaceLocator -p 0 0 0 -n ($grpName+"_Locator"+$i);} 

 

[james-daugherty]

Ahh, that's a slick idea. In my case I'd need to create the group first so that if it clashes with another it will get incremented and I can grab the name.  Eventually the user will be selecting one the locators and running the script from a UI, but for testing I just wanted to save a few clicks and save the UI for later.

Thanks Davus,

[ldunham1]

personally i store the names of the objects within a variable as so i dont need to worry about naming conventions (unless required).

maya's parent command will return the names of the parented objects (due to objects being renamed).
This means you can (if desired) store and append the names of the newly parented objects within an array to later select.

[joojaa]

There are two easier ways your all neglecting. You can use short names you know, they dont change. But just in case you need to use long names list relatives of the group (its faster than string operating in mel). Example:

{ // do not pollute
  $group = group(`ls -sl`);
  $orig = `listRelatives -c -f $group`;
  print $orig;
}
 
// or if you dont care about the group at all
{
$orig = listRelatives("-c","-f",group(`ls -sl`)) ;
print $orig;
}